When a studio world premieres a movie at Telluride to tee off its chances during awards season, they have to make sure they’ve got the goods, and Sony certainly did coming away from its launch of Jason Reitman‘s all-star Saturday Night about the 90-minute agita experienced by SNL producer Lorne Michaels before the show’s first broadcast in the fall of 1975.
Reitman is a true auteur in the sense of the word, a filmmaker who has done it his way. Saturday Night for one is shot in 16MM, cinema verité style with shots careening through network hallways and backstage curtains.
While Reitman is esteemed for such Oscar winners as Juno (which also doubled as a $143.3M grossing movie) and Up in the Air which notched six Oscar noms (three for Reitman in screenplay, directing and best picture categories), he’s also had his fair share of niche misfires, read his 2018 Hugh Jackman pic about Gary Hart’s scandal ridden presidential election bid back in the 1980s, The Front Runner ($2M), the schmaltzy Kate Winslet-Josh Brolin 2013 romance Labor Day ($13.3M) and the off-beat 2018 mommy-nanny Charlize Theron-Mackenzie Davis mystery Tully ($9.3M).
But with Saturday Night, Reitman is back to form per several critics and awards season pundits who savored it last night in Telluride.
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